Water Consultancies

Analytical tools & literature

• PRISMA (Moher et al., 2009)
• Q Method Software (Lutfallah & Buchanan, 2019)
• ATLAS.ti

Recommended resources

• Chong, K. (2012). The work of financialisation: an ethnography of a global management consultancy in post-Mao China (Doctoral dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science)
• Porto de Oliveira, O. (Ed.) (2021). A prelude to policy transfer research. Handbook of Policy Transfer, Diffusion and Circulation (pp. 1–24). Edward Elgar [link]
• Rapoport, E., & Hult, A. (2017). The travelling business of sustainable urbanism: International consultants as norm-setters. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49(8), 1779– 1796 [link]
• Tyler A. Scott & David P. Carter (2019) Collaborative governance or private policy making? When consultants matter more than participation in collaborative environmental planning, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 21(2), 153-173 [link]
• van den Broek, O.M. and Klingler-Vidra, R. (2022), The UN Sustainable Development Goals as a North Star: How an intermediary network makes, takes, and retrofits the meaning of the Sustainable Development Goals. Regulation & Governance, 16, 1306-1324 [link]

Reflections and recommendations by the researcher

My biggest recommendation is to dive deep into the subject matter that you are exploring. The richest part of my research was being able to be hosted and embedded into a consultancy firm - the subject of my study. I think what was underestimated was the time it would take to gain trust and forge relationships, in order to be able to have access to projects, be part of projects and gain support, as well as, openness in sharing experiences. It took me about one year into my research in order to get a sense of what I could use as a case and for my colleagues to understand and want to collaborate with me. As a fellow NEWAVEr said to me: "Research is a slow-cooked process". This also applies to my field work. Due to COVID-19, my field work in Chile and Colombia was quite rushed - about two months in each country. I could have easily stayed longer and could have dived deeper into the cases or could have returned. My recommendation would be to honour the time methods such as participative observation require. I would also like to add the richness in co-producing research. Meaning, taking the time from the beginning to think of the impact of your research and to think together with those who might be impacted by your research on what is interesting for them to research. Again, this requires a huge investment of time and energy to honour a co-production process. In retrospect, I experimented with participative observation and co-production, but acknowledge that I have only surfaced these practices in my research and would have required more time to honour these processes and dive-deep into them. Nevertheless, I have gained insights and hope to present them as respectfully as possible.